My main takeaway: ISC West will continue as a major, if not the main, trade show for the North American physical security market. Not so sure about ISC Solutions or ASIS though.

ASIS, as primarily an end-user show, was hardest hit when the economy went down, taking the end-user travel budgets with it. Furthermore, ASIS’s conference programming looks much stronger than that of ISC West. This is good for conference attendees, but bad for exhibitors, as people have more reason to stay out of the exhibit hall.

Still, ASIS could do more to draw traffic to the exhibits; when I compare ASIS with BICSI (also featuring a strong conference component), BICSI does a much better job of getting conference attendees into the exhibits, by scheduling a welcome reception, conference lunches, and other activities there. The drop in booth traffic at ASIS 2009 in Anaheim made us reduce our 20X20 booth size that we’d had for 3 years and go with 10X20 island space.

We’ll see how ASIS 2010 will turn out in Dallas; it’s a good spot for us, since there’s a long-standing wireless video surveillance system there for Dallas PD (now at 125+ cameras, 100% on wireless), so it will be nice to reference it.

March 27, 2010

It’s good to be home after three busy days in Vegas. Lots of follow-up to do in the coming week. Our booth traffic was 15% better than a year before: back to 2008 numbers, after a dip in 2009. Visitors were solid, and feedback on our new point-to-point product was excellent. I heard reports of people placing orders on the spot; we will be shipping the point-to-point bridges in April. Even for what we consider a ‘low-end’ product, we are delivering 35 Mbps UDP/25 Mbps TCP; plus, our MIMO-based point-to-point product is coming out later this year – with much higher throughput.

Here are the interesting points from the last day:

Dinner the night before with our systems integrator – Valley Ag. They are an ERP/IT/networking shop focused on the dairy industry in California’s Central Valley. They got into video surveillance and access control as an extension of their IT business, and have done numerous projects – both wired and wireless – for physical security, facility management and liability protection. Valley Ag is the proverbial IT integrator getting into security because of customer demand; they are an Axis Communications Gold Partner, so no beginners in physical security. Earlier on Thursday they were interviewed on video by Sam Pfeifle of Security Systems News (which they had not heard of prior to the show – goes to show), and the conversation went something like this: Sam: “How do you build a security system from the edge”? Them: “Why would you start at the edge? You need a strong networking core first.” It will be interesting to see how the video interview comes out.

I did not have the mental energy to make my way to the tweetup at Treasure Island, which I regret missing, but there’s only so much casino scene one can take late in the day and late into the show. Perhaps, for the next show someone can organize a tweetup on Day 1 or the day prior to exhibits opening? Went to the gym instead.

Day 3 is typically the slowest at a trade shows, but I started the day with a breakfast meeting for a roadshow we are planning with key partners. I regretted having scheduled it for 8 am, but the objective for an in-person kick-off was to avoid the time and expense of a separate meeting down the road. So here’s another advantage of the big shows – everyone you need to talk to is there. There were 10 people in the meeting, so collectively we saved $10-15K in travel costs and time out of the office, if not more.

Also had some time to visit partner’s booths and connect with people on a personal level. Many East Coasters were getting out on red-eye flights (ouch!). Even though I’m not a fan of Vegas, this is a great place for us West Coasters – only 1.5 hr flight to California.

2 individual ‘tweetups’ with industry people I met on Twitter (one was with a product manager from a big and important company – she brought their partner manager who I’d targeted for a ‘potential partner’ meeting but was not able to connect with. So yay, the power of social media!)

1 Firetide employees’ meeting/Happy Hour at our suite to recap the first two days of the show and compare notes.

Where else in the industry can you meet with that many people in one spot? You can gather feedback on your products from a wide range of audiences: from enthusiasts to detractors, from people well versed in our technology to people still uncomfortable with the idea of wireless. Don’t know if you need to pay $.48 per square foot (plus numerous other costs) to accomplish the same, but if you don’t have an exhibit what is the reason for people to come? So the ‘big security trade show’ model still works, at least at ISC West.

Oh, one more appointment – with ISC Events sales staff to pick up booth space for next year: same size, same location, even the same booth number – 24083. See you there next year!

March 26, 2010

Again, a great day at ISC West – the show continues to be very busy, and the booth team was stretched at times in their ability to handle all the traffic. Not knowing what to expect, we had a rather lean team on the show floor. But we managed.

I was able to walk the floor a bit, and visited some of the distributors’ and partners’ booths. The overall sentiment was that it was busier than last year. (By the way, “Video Surveillance Pavilion,” where one of our distributors was, is a scam to get people to take up booths at the back of the show floor. Most of the show is ‘video surveillance,’ so no reason to be stuck there.) On this note, we picked the same booth for next year, so barring any booth re-ordering we’ll even be at the same booth number – 24083.

Interesting tidbits from Day 2 meetings:

Discussion with a telecom analyst who was just at CTIA, and now’s headed over to ISC West for vertical insights. According to the analyst, “once you do video [over wireless], everything else [data, VoIP] is a piece of cake.” However, doing high-capacity wireless infrastructure for video surveillance only, for example in transportation, can be very expensive, and “other applications, such as Wi-Fi for passengers, or streaming ad messages can remove part of the cost.” The “everything else after video is a piece of cake” message rang true to me – the problem with wireless is that many vendors are trying to shape their offerings into a “video solution” while their gear was built from the ground up to support Wi-Fi data, with a completely different set of requirements for latency, jitter, QoS, and ability to handle multicast traffic. But it’s encouraging that after 15 min of conversation the analyst was able to see how we are different.

Got together with our integrator to touch base (and meet in person for the first time) after we’ve worked together to publicize their public safety deployment using Firetide gear. Interesting factoid: a local transit authority priced out a fiber deployment along the right of way (trackside infrastructure): $8 mil. To provide similar connectivity with Firetide’s linear mesh: 1/10th of that. Based on the wireless estimate, the authority is applying for grant funding. Moral of the story: it’ll be much easier to get a grant when you use wireless mesh as your backbone.

Introductory meeting with a potential partner – they reached out to us to set it up, so I was intrigued about what they were looking for. I knew they had a wireless component as part of their offering, since at least one of their wireless installs was featured in the press (i.e. it helps to read security media). After I gave a 3-slide spiel on Firetide as an intro, the first comment from them was: “We hear that wireless mesh has problems with video.” “Aha!” I said, “You must be talking about Wi-Fi mesh, or mesh access points.” (This is the topic I covered in an earlier post, so I’ll just link to it here: The Many Interpretations of Wireless Mesh.) It will be interesting to see how this discussion progresses.

Overall, ISC West is delivering a great mix of steady booth traffic and productive meetings with our customers, solution partners, distributors, press and analysts. Has the ‘death of the tradeshow’ been exaggerated?

March 25, 2010

The show has been very busy. People trying to get in ahead of the opening at 10 am had to elbow their way in. Out of those coming through our booth, most know Firetide, some are a looking for wireless solutions, some bring the promo mailer we sent out prior to the show. Most are integrators, with some consultants and end-users mixed in. People who know us say “There’s nothing out there like Firetide for video” (See Severin Sorensen’s comment – I had to quote it here: “ISC West impressions: Wireless increasing in use, applications, and capacity. Firetide 7000 radio is category killer, leapfrogs competition.”)

People who do not have much experience with wireless are really interested in the point-to-point product. This is a great addition to our product line, so that we don’t have to overwhelm the wireless ‘beginners’ with the mesh topology, our mesh routing protocol, and the price point. For someone trying to connect an outlying guard shack, mesh would be too much of a learning curve. But even at what we consider ‘low-end’ point to point, we are still providing 35 Mbps UDP/25 Mbps TCP (in the 5 GHz band), while anywhere from 1 to 10 Mbps is typical with this type of equipment.

In other highlights, IMS Research hosted a customer briefing, where they presented their recent market findings. The interesting prediction for me was that by 2013 HD/megapixel camera revenue will cross over that from standard definition cameras. (In terms of shipped units, HD/megapixel will comprise 1/3, and standard definition – 2/3). Wireless networks will have to keep up to accommodate this grown in high-definition video, and we are already way ahead of competition in the capacity department with our dual-radio MIMO mesh line.

Another observation: currently, 60% of camera revenues are attributed to ONVIF members, while 30% are from PSIA members. IMS raised the question: does the market need two standards? This will be interesting to watch in 2010.

In terms of vertical markets, public safety video surveillance (also know as “city-center surveillance” or “crime cameras”) is a very strong market, according to IMS. Other verticals that proved resilient to the recession are education and transportation. Transportation is good news for us, since these projects often involve outdoor surveillance – i.e. ports, airports), while transit agencies are exploring real-time mobile video – sweet spot for (Firetide’s) wireless mesh with its high-capacity and distributed intelligence, which enables roaming and hand-off without any loss of packets. Verticals that were hardest hit are retail, banking and casinos. (So why does the newly rebranded ISC East has retail as one of the four focus areas?)

Speaking of ISC East – now ISC Solutions – it’s still not clear how that show has changed. Will they compete even more with ASIS in the new incarnation? What does solution focus mean? We’ll see.

If you are on Twitter, follow #ISCW10 hashtag for real-time developments: many editors, exhibitors, and attendees are posting impressions from the show floor and the conference sessions. And see Firetide at booth 24083 (Hall D).

While Firetide is known for its wireless mesh products, especially in the public safety video surveillance, we are much more than that. In fact, we’ve had our own wireless LAN controller for about 18 months. We provide access points, both with a controller architecture (thin APs), and without a controller (fat APs). With the WLAN controller product, we address a growing convergence trend in the channel, where a single integrator, be it security or IT, now provides the entire spectrum of networking services to an enterprise – from IP video surveillance to Wi-Fi access for employees and guests.

This extended wireless portfolio – from high-performance mesh backhaul to feature-rich WLAN management – is an excellent solution for integrators looking to break into new markets.

Mesh networks are also growing in popularity for businesses that need to create temporary networks, deploy quickly, or extend connectivity to places where cable cannot reach. Firetide’s product portfolio – from mesh to access points to WLAN management – provides an attractive solution to enterprises.

From a channel perspective, Firetide WLAN Controller is aimed at our existing channel. Through the agreement with NETGEAR, we are able to leverage our technology for a much larger small-to-medium enterprise market.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the series: “Why a Mesh Company Designs a Point-to-Point Product.”

This is another “The many interpretations of…” post, inspired by the IWCE’s session on Wireless Killer Apps (for notes on the first session I presented at, Wireless Surveillance 101, see my post The Many Interpretations of Wireless Mesh). The panel was moderated by Eric Hill of Enterprise Wireless Alliance who did a great job putting together a “killer” panel with presentations ranging from narrow band data (paging) all the way to mobile voice and video. (See slides from Eric’s opening remarks.)

Again, I was reminded that there are many interpretations of “mobile video” – based on cellular data (EVDO), 3G/4G,Wi-Fi access and infrastructure mesh. The mobile video can mean:

Viewing video on PDAs by police officers in the field, as discussed by Bruce Lee of Sprint

1 frames per second (300 kbps) from covert video systems deployed by Mobilcomm for tactical operations, to

The core advantages remain the same, and I could not agree more with Bruce Lee’s points on what wireless enables:

Shorter decision cycles

Real-time intelligence

Common operating picture

An important point from the Sprint presentation was that 3G/4G data service is asymmetrical, the systems are designed to provide more capacity for download, and less for upload. This obviously impacts video streaming, which is all upload. Many (if not all) operators would block video streaming, although law enforcement can receive preferential treatment from the operator.

There’s room for all of these approaches – the choice of technology will depend on the objectives and desired video quality. Many covert applications can be accomplished via cellular data service. Video from the field, even at 2-3 frames per second, can provide enough situational awareness to help decision makers provide response to an unfolding situation.

But if the municipally, public safety or transit agency requires high-resolution, evidence-grade video from moving vehicles, only high-bandwidth, purpose-built wireless mesh video system will fit the bill. Note that standard resolution IP camera streaming at 30 fps will consume about 2-3 Mbps of bandwidth, while top of the line 12 megapixel camera can take up to 35 Mbps of bandwidth. It all depends on the customer’s requirements, their own-vs-rent philosophy, and budget (very important, because high-resolution mesh systems are not cheap).

Other highlights from the panel:

Sprint: The cellular carrier can enable some very interesting applications, including one to deal with driver distractions (important for transit, trucking industries). If the operator determines (via your GPS-enabled cell phone) that you are in motion, the application – running both on the server and on the phone itself – can disable the cellular connection so that you cannot text or speak on the phone.

Prism Paging: Paging industry is not dead! Often paging networks are the most resilient especially in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Paging is also used extensively in first responder and medical applications, all the way to restaurant pagers.

Alcatel-Lucent: Focusing on mobile core and voice transmission over IP.

Mobilcomm: “Trash cams”: Mobilcomm deployed covert cameras trained on (or were they inside?) trash cans in a city park to catch drug dealers as they dumped drugs during a police sting operation.

Also, check out my blog post with notes from Wireless Surveillance 101 session: The Many Interpretations of Wireless Mesh. You may also find useful a presentation on Video Surveillance Trends and Basics by Steve Surfaro of Axis Communications, who was also part of Wireless Surveillance 101 workshop: download 20 MB Google Docs PPT file.

It was interesting, albeit a bit awkward, to be on the same panel at the IWCE conference with one of our major competitor (click on the session description for speakers to find out who it was). But we managed to remain civil and deliver our respective presentations without major barbs or uncomfortable moments. But my take-away from listening to the presentations, including by Eye3Data and Incident Communications Solutions (ICS), is that there exist many interpretations and definitions of ‘mesh.’

In our competitor’s view, mesh is based on “Mesh APs (access points)” – with some of the radios used for access and some used for mesh backhaul. Essentially, “mesh and access [are] combined in the same access point.” Mesh is defined as “decentralized, self-forming fixed mobile access networks employing standards-based Wi-Fi technology.” Mesh is “omni-directional,” meaning the devices use omni-directional antennas. The limitations in video, according to the company, is that it’s difficult to scale as the meshes grow larger, the overhead becomes too much for the mesh to manage. (Note that the text in quotation marks is from the print-out of the presentation, the rest is quoting from memory.)

As I listed to this approach, it was apparent how different it is from Firetide’s. Consider these points:

While Firetide (as other mesh providers) uses 802.11 radios, the communications within the mesh are not Wi-Fi compliant, and instead apply changes to the radio MAC along with proprietary routing protocol, creating a virtual distributed wireless Ethernet switch. This architecture enables lower overhead, extra security of data – through encapsulation, – high throughput, and ability to handle multicast traffic.

Firetide mesh is not limited to omni-directional communications. You have the flexibility to deploy any antennas that are best suited for the project: omni-directional, directional and specialized, such as yagis.

Scale is not an issue for Firetide. The best practice for video deployments is to utilize a multi-mesh design, then interconnecting the meshes via wired or wireless (mesh) connection. With Firetide’s architecture, these interconnected meshes still act as a single distributed wireless Ethernet switch, maintaining a single IP address and delivering the same speed and efficiency, compared to single mesh.

Lastly, another difference between Firetide’s and most other Wi-Fi mesh is Firetide’s modular form factor: access points are not integrated into our mesh nodes, but come as separate units. The rationale being that many of applications for Firetide mesh do not require APs at all, so if the units were integrated the customer would pay for hardware they do not need. When Wi-Fi access is part of the project, the modular design allows the customers to put mesh nodes higher up (for better line of sight) and the access points closer to the ground, where the users are.

That said, both approaches to mesh are valid – but it all depends on the application. If your primary application is low-bandwidth data and/or you need to provide Wi-Fi access to your users, the “all-in-one” design employed by most mesh providers makes sense. AP-and-backhaul in one box and built-in omni-directional antennas simplify installations and make the gear look less obtrusive. (Edited 3/17/20: Strike “less obtrusive”: I saw this particular mesh AP exhibited at IWCE and it’s massive, standing at about 1 ft and weighing in at 39 lb.) On the other hand, this gear is purpose-built for one application – Wi-Fi data – and adding on VoIP or video is a challenge for many of these providers (see John Honivich’s comment to the “Mesh and Mobility” post).

The confusion comes when the term ‘mesh’ is used to describe any type of a mesh topology, regardless of whether it uses Mesh APs, Wi-Fi mesh or what we define as “infrastructure mesh,” essentially L2 mesh with L3 routing within it.

On an interesting side note, I was impressed how far Firetide has come in the industry. All three of the other presenters mentioned Firetide in their presentations:

ICS is a big reseller of AgileMesh, an OEM partner of Firetide. AgileMesh provides rapidly deployable video surveillance gear, which utilizes Firetide mesh for communications, so Firetide came up in the presentation from ICS on tactical wireless video surveillance.

Eye3Data works with many transit, transportation and law enforcement agencies to provide mobile video surveillance. Right in their presentation, they put a slide on the project they are a proposing for a police department: wireless offload of video recordings from police cruisers, utilizing Firetide’s mesh.

I expected that Axis would perhaps acknowledge Firetide in their presentation, given that they are a long-term partner of ours. But the other two references came as a complete surprise.

If you are at the IWCE conference, please check out the other session I’ll be speaking at: Killer Apps in Wireless; Friday March 12 10 am – 12 noon. I will be discussing mobile, real-time wireless video surveillance for transportation, industrial operations and law enforcement. (For notes from the Killer Apps session, see my post “Defining Mobile Video.”)

March 4, 2010

Oct. 2010 update: This post was written around ISC West 2010, but the discussion is still applicable to ASIS 2010. If you are on twitter, follow @firetide and @kseniacoffman for updates from the show. I will also be attending the ASIS tour of the Dallas Police Department wireless surveillance system and monitoring center (Monday October 10), so look for my updates on that as well. Firetide will be at ASIS in booth 3824).

Below commentary is a guest post by Severin Sorensen, President and CEO at Sikyur LLC, reprinted with permission from his comments on IP Video Market Info LinkedIn group’s discussion on the upcoming ISC West trade show in Las Vegas. (And of course Firetide will be exhibiting at ISC West – our 5th year.)

Severin offers excellent commentary on the state of the security industry, and his insights are especially valuable since, as a security consultant, he is involved with the projects at the very beginning. Here’s his take:

“Conventions and trade shows have been hard hit during this downturn, and ISC West is no exception. From the map, you can clearly see how much trade show space open at this late hour — and this was surely not the case in 2007 when they were filled early upstairs, and also filled a huge downstairs section with booths nearest the registration area. The trade show was also noticeably impacted last year (the 2009 show) coming some six months after the September 2008 economic market crash, however the impact of the economic crash on the trade show floor exhibit space was muted as many companies had pre-booked their exhibits a year in advance and their sunk costs were non-refundable, so this surely lessened the financial blow to the organization in 2009.

So what does lower expected booth sales and attendance at ISC West this year mean to the industry? Continued tight economic times. Many consultants idle. New construction starts of security projects slow to be released. CFOs and CEOs making incremental quarterly go/no-go decisions, not annually as before the crash. And for the security industry investor — an amazing market consolidation opportunity to purchase for fractions of company worth companies that are under-capitalized, picking apart and purchasing companies among the living dead at low multiples on actual 2009 earnings — which should have the vulture capitalists salivating — what an opportunity. Thucydides said it best — “The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” We are headed into a consolidation boom as there is much private equity capital waiting in the wings for just such an opportunity. My own market forecast calls for 2-3 more years of difficult times in the broader market, and perhaps another year for the security market, but down the market will go yet again. January 2010 was absolute murder for the integrators and suppliers — a near market seizure — wait for the results to be reported and you will see. We are all part of a bigger market event going on.

So what does this all mean to me? ISC West is still one of the two most important security shows in the USA held annually (the other being ASIS), and it is a must attend for me. Indeed, it is more important than ever before for me as a security advisor and management consultant, to lay eyes on the companies that remain in business, to take a snap shot and review of the industry, in order to make sensible recommendations to my clients and design projects on who will remain on my spec list for equipment and services in the future. The networking, off-floor hotel meetings, strategic partnership opportunities, private equity meetings, will be better this year than has been seen in many years. So yes, there will be fewer exhibiting vendors, but the show and the total event is more important this year as it is a “survivors” photo opportunity, and chance to network and make better plans to navigate the choppy waters of this economic environment.”

About the post author: Severin Sorensen, CPP is President and CEO at Sikyur LLC and is also Chairman of the Physical Security Council of ASIS International, the world’s largest security manager association with 35,000 members. Sorensen, in his private security management consulting practice since 1987, helps senior level-security professionals, and in particular, the Chief Security Officers and their direct-reports, adapt to changing environments of risk, regulation, and information technology convergence that are rapidly reshaping the security field. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.